How To Double Your Business ROI with Email Campaign Management

Email has changed and so has email users. To get breakthrough results, you must keep implementing fresh ideas and add innovations to your strategy. Over time, your email marketing campaigns ought to get stale and as a result, your email ROI gets hampered. We thought of talking to Andy Shore, the content manager at Benchmark Email since eight long years, and he shared some great email campaign management ideas to double the business ROI.

Let’s embark on the insightful journey we shared with Shore and learn how to double your business ROI.

About the goals

What is the first thing that email marketers should do to double the business ROI?

The first thing that any email marketer should do in order to double the business ROI is determining the goals and understanding the outcome of the efforts. Email marketing represents a direct relationship with your prospective customers and subscribers, and if you want to make it work, you ought to nurture the relationship and make sure you are delivering value to the subscribers. You should strive to practice a customer centric, customer first email marketing strategy because that’s where the return on investment is going to come from. That’s where the relationship is going to pay dividends, because you are holding up your side of things and other side of things will naturally flow from there.

Understand the customers

How important it is to understand your target audience when it comes to boosting your email ROI?

As harsh and bitter as it may sound, it is selfish when businesses do not take time to understand their target audience. Conversions happen and ROI is earned only when you take care of your subscribers. Effective email marketing is similar to being in a good relationship. If you devote enough time and effort for your subscriber, it is certainly gonna pay you. At the end, you can drive email ROI only if you send the right message at the right time to the right people.

What kind of strategy can you have, to understand your target audience?

Knowing your subscribers becomes easy when you talk to them and try to learn what they need. Every marketer must remember that there is a person on the other side of the email so you should take time to ask them questions and create customer personas. You should also consider the email marketing metrics such as open rates and click-through rates to know what is working with your subscribers. Other than that, visit trade shows and speak to different people. This can be a great learning experience for you.

How to manage the diverse customer personas?

It can get quite taxing to send different email campaigns to each persona. You can pair a couple of personas together and send relevant campaigns that would connect to them. You might not hit the bull’s eye every time but it will provide more value to the recipient. You can employ artificial intelligence and add merge fields in the email to fetch dynamic content based on the segments. Also, you can set email automation to send more personalized information based on the subscriber’s activity.

Planning and timing your emails right

How early one should plan their email marketing campaigns to overcome the tight deadlines?

Create a strong plan and email calendar right at the beginning of the year so that you can send out effective campaigns that would engage your subscribers better. Whether it is Valentine’s Day, Easter, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Back to school campaigns, or campaigns for the most lucrative Holiday season, you should be ready with the plan well in advance. That does not mean you have to stick to it. There could be instances when you have to add a campaign or may be, even skip one, but having a calendar will surely make things easy for you as you know when to start preparing for the next campaign. Doing so gives you enough time to draft a well-designed landing page, blog post or any other resources associated with the email.

What is the best time to send an email?

The only way to determine the best time to send your emails is checking the reports that show the open rate by hours. See the time when maximum people are opening your email campaigns to figure out when you should send an email. You can also carry out A/B Testing to test the send time and then see which email has better open rates. However, an important aspect to consider before you decide upon your send time is who your subscribers are. Try to understand your email list and create personas to visualize how their life could be like. Based on that, you can assume when they are going to access the emails. You never know whether your subscriber will open your emails on Tuesdays or Thursdays or during the weekend. You can test and derive a conclusion after trial and error.

Building your email list and segmenting it

How long should a sign-up form be, to build a quality email list?

Generally, it is believed that a sign-up form should be as short as possible. To figure out what works the best for you, you should carry out some testing and see what brings you better conversions. You ought to have minimum information so that you can eliminate any possible roadblock in getting a conversion. If a long sign-up form lowers the conversion rate, you can figure out a workaround to collect the necessary information. A good idea would be to send a welcome email and subtly ask for any additional subscriber details that you are looking for. Moreover, you should also work on the copy of the sign-up form and inform the users about your offerings. By doing so, you will be able to avoid random leads who are hardly interested in your products or services.

What are some of the effective strategies to segment an email list?

Primary segmentation happens right in the sign up form where the prospect fills up the basic details and shares little bit of their information. Additionally, you can use the email marketing metrics and segment the subscribers based on the emails they have opened and clicked.

Let’s say you have a book store. You can create relevant emails based on the genre of books, the subscribers are interested in. This will retain the interest of the recipients and encourage them to buy from you.

Engaging and reengaging the prospects and customers

What kind of ideas should a marketer implement to engage maximum subscribers?

Surveys are the favorite among a lot of marketers because it gives the opportunity to let your subscribers share their perception about your brand. It also shows them that you value their opinion. Ask open ended questions or a single click survey where the subscriber has to just choose an answer. Every click works as a testimony of subscriber engagement.

According to a survey at Benchmark Email, marketing automation is one of the biggest fears among people because of limited resources and lack of knowledge. Helping people conquer their fears can be your gateway to increased subscriber engagement. It instils a feeling of community and you also have a lot of fun with your prospects.

How should you employ cart recovery program to get optimum level of engagement?

Two to three cart abandonment emails would get you good subscriber engagement. The first one should be sent within 24 hours of the abandonment. As a marketer, you should keep in mind that cart abandonment emails should work as a nudge without sounding too desperate. Often, it so happens that the prospect is distracted and they have decided to go with someone else. The least you wanna do in this case is annoy them but what you can do is keep sending them better deals at regular intervals and wait for them to complete the purchase. Offering discounts and deals would not devalue your products or services but only enhance the value your brand provides to the prospects.

How do you win back your customers?

One of the most effective ways to win back the customers is simply telling them:

“Hey, we noticed that you haven’t being really responding to our emails. That’s okay!

We don’t wanna keep bugging you if you really don’t want to hear from us.”

Give them the opportunity to unsubscribe or remove them.

Human psychology works that way. When you create the fear of missing out in the minds of the subscriber, they might engage with you yet again.

You can also create a gamified loyalty program and show the progress of the subscribers by creating different levels like Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum.

As another tactic, you can offer discounts and let them know that they are special to you. Your email should reflect that you value their association with you.

Getting maximum conversions

How to convert maximum leads into customers/SQLs?

Email automation is the key to converting your prospects into customers. It lets you understand what engages your subscribers and how you can power up your emails with the information they are looking for. If you are in the service industry, you can organize webinars and send webinar invitations to your prospective clients. You can send out a couple of free resources that you have created to offer more value to the recipient. Furthermore, you can nurture the leads with testimonials shared by your existing customers. Nothing builds trust the way customer feedback does.

Wrapping Up

Email marketing is all about learning and iterating through the experiences you have. If you want to boost your ROI, follow these simple tips and you will undoubtedly see the results you are looking for.